[255] Cf. Vol. I., p. 88.—T.
[256] Ibid., pp. 74 et seq.—T.
[257] Ibid., pp. 81 et seq.—T.
[258] By the old laws of the Monarchy, the majority of the Kings of France was fixed at the commencement of their fourteenth year. The memory of this law determined several hundreds of Frenchmen to go together to visit the Elder Branch of the Bourbons, at fifteen hundred miles from their country. This manifestation carried with it a certain hostility to the new Dynasty. The Government of July, accordingly, did not fail, naturally enough, when all is said and done, to put some petty annoyances in the way of the travellers. It prevailed upon the Austrian Government to turn a large number of them back at the frontiers. In Frankfort and Munich, King Louis-Philippe's chargés d'affaires refused to give the necessary visas; several were detained at Pilsen and Waldmünchen, as also at Mayence and Eger.
Moreover, this little manifestation was looked upon almost as unfavourably in Prague as in Paris. King Charles X. and his son, the Dauphin, had abdicated at Rambouillet, and they had no thought of withdrawing their respective abdications; only, in order to keep up the moral absence of responsibility of the Duc de Bordeaux and also to facilitate the relations between the exiles and the Cabinets, particularly the Cabinet of Vienna, they wished to retain, while on foreign soil, a title which seemed to them inseparable from that of heads of the Bourbon Family. The journey of the young Frenchmen who were coming to greet Henry of France on the day of his entering upon his fourteenth year might upset those private arrangements of the exiled Family. It was therefore not calculated to please the old King and his son. Hence the little incidents which the author of the Memoirs will presently describe to us.—B.
The Duc de Bordeaux was born on the 29th of September 1820, seven and a half months after his father's assassination, and therefore attained his majority, according to the laws of the French Monarchy, on the 29th of September 1833—T.
[259] "Among the visitors to Prague were Vendeans whose wounds were not yet closed and as many as eight persons who had been sentenced to death in their absence and who had saved their heads by flight." (Alfred Nettement: Henri de France, Vol. I, p. 264).—B.
[260] The Chroniques de Saint-Denys or Grandes chroniques de France were chronicles compiled from the earliest times of the French Monarchy by the Benedictines of Saint-Denis and kept in the treasury of the abbey. The Abbot of Saint-Denis used to appoint a monk as historiographer whose duty it was to follow the Court in order to collect and write down events as they occurred. On the death of the king, a history of his reign was drawn up from these notes, and this history, after being submitted to the Chapter, was incorporated in the Grandes chroniques. Suger, who became Abbot of Saint-Denis in 1122, collected all the chronicles compiled from the commencement of the Monarchy and himself wrote those of his own time. After the discovery of printing, an abstract of the Grandes chroniques was prepared and published by Jean Chartier, the Benedictine, in 1476, under the title, Chroniques de France depuis les Troiens jusqu'à la mort de Charles VII., in 3 volumes 4to. They constitute the first French book known to have been printed in Paris. These three volumes, which brought up the History of France to 1461, were reprinted, with a continuation to 1513, in 1514. A more recent edition appeared in Paris in 1836 to 1841, in 6 volumes 8vo.—T.
[261] Alfred Xavier Baron Dufougerais (1804-1874), a member of a royalist family, was a barrister in Paris when, in 1828, he became one of the proprietors and one of the editors of the Quotidien. In April 1831, he bought the Mode, revue du monde élégant from Émile de Girardin, its founder, and turned it into a political organ. He kept the fashion article and plates, so as to justify the title and retain the advantages attaching to the speciality; but at the same time the paper, in his hands, became a formidable weapon against the Monarchy of July. Without being exactly a writer, Alfred Dufougerais possessed the journalistic instinct to a high degree, and, under his management, the Mode soon took the leading place in the van-guard of the royalist press. In September 1834, the state of his health obliged him to transfer the ownership of his paper to other hands. Alfred Dufougerais, who was gifted with a genuine talent for speaking, preferred the contests of the bar to those of the press. He appeared in all the leading newspaper trials and soon became standing counsel to the royalist journals both in the provinces and in Paris. Among other feats, he thrice obtained the acquittal of the Indépendant de l'Ouest at Laval. In 1849, Dufougerais was elected by the Department of the Vendée to the Chamber of Deputies, where he constantly voted with the Right until the coup d'État of 2 December 1851, when he retired into private life.—B.
[262] Charles Vicomte de Nugent, poet and prose-writer and a member of the editorial staff of the Revenant and the Mode.—B.